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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29768430">SEASON ONE</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cacowhistle/pseuds/cacowhistle'>cacowhistle</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Old Gods of the Dream SMP [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Horror, Arson, Family Dynamics, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Old Gods of Appalachia AU, Temporary Character Death, i have no idea what else to tag this as, old forest gods babey, you dont have to know shit about old gods to read this dw</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 00:47:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,631</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29768430</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cacowhistle/pseuds/cacowhistle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere deep in the woods, somethin' is howlin', and the Soot boys are clingin' tight to each other as they put one foot in front of the other, hopin' it won't catch up with them.</p><p>Niki Nihachu watches the mayor's house burn, and hears her mama's voice sayin' <em>nice work, firebug.</em></p><p>Philza takes in a boy with tusks and blood on his hands, promisin' himself he will not lose another one to the beast of bloodshed.</p><p>or;</p><p>Old and eldritch things haunt the lands of the Dream SMP, and a sparse group of individuals fight to survive them, building a family out of nothing in the process.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Niki | Nihachu &amp; Wilbur Soot, Technoblade &amp; Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Wilbur Soot &amp; Technoblade, Wilbur Soot &amp; Technoblade &amp; TommyInnit &amp; Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot &amp; TommyInnit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Old Gods of the Dream SMP [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2187852</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. PROLOGUE.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>First, it was a burial ground.</p><p>Technically, it was <em>called </em>a burial ground. Really, it was where they took witches and set them up to hang or burn, take your pick. They called it a burial ground because they didn’t like callin’ it what it was--a gallows, an executioner’s stand. But at the end of the day, it was where the wicked were laid to rest, and nobody wanted to incur their wrath from beyond the grave.</p><p>Then, it became grounds for a small prison encampment. Those they thought were wrongdoers would be sent out to the woods. <em>Woods, </em>not forest, because there’s a difference, but nevertheless it was where folks who broke the law were sent--again, witches and the like. They thought they could save ‘em. It ended with the camp bein’ burned to the ground one night. There were three deaths on-site, five after the injured were brought back to town, and twenty-four casualties. Nobody bothered to fix up the damned place after that.</p><p>A few years after the fire, they took the land and turned it into a schoolhouse, which it remains to be to this day. It’s little more than a few rotting wooden walls and a ratty old leaking roof, but back in the day it was one of the nicest, newest buildings in the area. Kids would go out to school in the morn and come back by sundown, and there was never a problem with the schoolhouse for the longest time.</p><p>At least not until one of the Hunt boys lost it, one evening, and murdered Miss Grace on the grounds. They stopped usin' the school, after that. He disappeared into the woods soon after, and nobody quite knows what happened to him.</p><p>All except for us, of course, but we’ll get back to him eventually.</p><p>Let’s go back to those witches, shall we?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. THE FIREBUG: PART ONE.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>There’s nothing quite like huntin’ fireflies. Trapping the little blinking lights in a jar and watchin’ them flutter about, blinking their lights on and off, prowling through the open fields and watching them twinkle like stars brought down to the surface of the earth between the grasses, little bright points against a pitch black night sky. They’re little creatures, small’n ultimately harmless, a tiny little mock piece of starlight and divinity in the form of an insect.</p><p>Some call ‘em lightning bugs. Others call them candle flies, fireworms, etcetera, etcetera.</p><p>Niki Nihachu’s mama called them <em>firebugs. </em>Coincidentally, that’s the nickname she gave her daughter, too.</p><p>chapter tws: semi-graphic descriptions of violence &amp; character death</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s nothing quite like huntin’ fireflies. Trapping the little blinking lights in a jar and watchin’ them flutter about, blinking their lights on and off, prowling through the open fields and watching them twinkle like stars brought down to the surface of the earth between the grasses, little bright points against a pitch black night sky. They’re little creatures, small’n ultimately harmless, a tiny little mock piece of starlight and divinity in the form of an insect.</p><p>Some call ‘em lightning bugs. Others call them candle flies, fireworms, etcetera, etcetera.</p><p>Niki Nihachu’s mama called them <em>firebugs. </em>Coincidentally, that’s the nickname she gave her daughter, too.</p><p>Niki was an awful sweet girl--as pretty as she was kind. She wouldn’t hurt a fly, and everyone would tell you as much. She was as lovely as they came, and then some, if a little soft-spoken. The town loved her, in the same way small towns love draggin’ families into financial ruin, and the same way the mines up in the mountains love to swallow men whole. The town loved her, when she did right by them.</p><p>But Miss Niki Nihachu didn’t like doin’ right by the town. According to the town, doin’ right by them meant shutting up and sitting pretty, and this little girl wanted none of that. She had hair as golden as the sunset and eyes as dark and wild as the embers of a burned-out flame, and she burned brighter than any damn firebug her mama compared her to.</p><p>No, Niki Nihachu burned brighter than the damn <em>sun </em>on her best days. She was no soft-spoken, proper-lookin’ little girl. She wanted to <em>burn </em>and she wanted everyone to see it, see the way she would change the folks around her the way the sun chars the wings of men that fly too close.</p><p>She wanted men to fly too close, if only so she could watch them smolder.</p><p>That might’ve been why she liked the Soot boy so much. They both just wanted to ruin things, in some small way.</p><p>She wanted to run and be <em>free, </em>free in the way Ms. Maker had been before she’d been strung up in the town square for witchcraft. Niki had always liked Ms. Maker--she’d been kind and soft-spoken just like Niki, and she’d told her all sorts of sweet stories and sent her little gifts when her daughter Puffy made her visits.</p><p>It was awful unfair when the town turned their eyes on the Nihachu household just because they’d harbored the Maker girl once her mama was gone.</p><p>The old schoolteacher was the new mayor, or the closest thing to a mayor town <em>had</em>--they were a bit out in the middle of nowhere, and that sort of hierarchy doesn’t mean much when the entire place knows each other by first name, and everyone knows where everyone else lives. Nobody wants to take charge or make waves when it means one wrong move sends an angry mob to your door, and that night at the Nihachu home proved that danger to be very real.</p><p>The mayor had all sorts of ideas about <em>witches, </em>and he spat out the word like it burned his lips when he spoke it. He’d called the late Ms. Maker a bitch and a wrong’un, and Niki had never been more frightened of the man, truth be told. She didn’t like people that treated innocent women like that, and she’d never really liked the old man anyways.</p><p>Bitterly, she watched him approach the house. She was content to sit there and glare at him until her very stare frightened him to the point’a turnin’ him around, but her mama very well might’a saved her life when she called for her, then.</p><p>“Niki,” her mama said, softly, taking her hand and Puffy’s hand in her own, “I want you to take Puffy and run. There’s an old buildin’ out by the woods at the end of the dirt road leading south of town, you two’re to stay put there until someone comes to get you. Y’hear me?”</p><p>Now, Niki was a young girl, but she was also a smart one. She knew her mama was in danger from the way she refused to look her in the eye when she asked her to come with.</p><p>But she was also a brave girl. Niki Nihachu wasn’t afraid of anything, no sir, and she would prove it, with or without her mother. So she tugged Puffy along by the hand and the two of them ran and ran down the road and out of sight, and because Niki was a brave girl she told Puffy to stay put in the old building her mama described before she straightened out her skirt and marched right back towards the town.</p><p>She wasn’t scared. She was tired, and confused, but Niki wasn’t the kind’a girl to get <em>scared.</em></p><p>She wasn’t the kind’a girl to cry, either. She hadn’t cried earlier that year when Wilbur died, and she hadn’t cried when his kid-brother Tommy disappeared soon after. She didn’t shed a damn tear when her dog Dottie died of old age and illness.</p><p>And so she didn’t cry when she saw her mama getting dragged out of the house by her hair screamin’ and kickin’ and cryin’, and she didn’t cry when her papa got shot in the front yard, and she sure as Hell didn’t start cryin’ when they set the damn house on fire.</p><p>No, she only started cryin’ when the flames were nothing more than ashes, soot like her best friend Wilbur’s last name coating the old foundations of her family home. The hollowed out husk of a house made her cry, and how pathetic was that? She decided she didn’t like that.</p><p>As Niki walked back to the old shed Puffy was hiding in, she still wasn’t scared. Tired, hungry, angry and confused, sure, but not scared yet. She was angry, mostly, because her mama was gone and her papa was gone too and her home and family had been burned all down to ash, and it just didn’t seem fair in the slightest to her that she should be left with nothing but an old family friend and a soft little blue sheep doll she’d snagged on the way outta the house that morning.</p><p>“It isn’t fair,” she said, softly. Puffy shook her head.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” she murmured, taking Niki’s hands. They sat like that for a while, just holding each other’s hands. Niki cried a bit more, though she made Puffy swear herself to secrecy on that front. She wasn’t gonna let herself keep cryin’ over it.</p><p>“What are you gonna do?” Puffy asked, voice soft.</p><p>Niki paused, then, racking her brain for anything that might help. She was still angry and frustrated, and she wanted the town to feel all this hurt that they’d caused her by burnin’ down her house and takin’ away her family. Still wasn’t scared--Niki Nihachu wasn’t the kind’a girl to get scared, and she didn’t plan on startin’ now.</p><p>The mayor lived in a nice, pretty house up on the hill, just outta reach of the town. He had more money than most’a the town combined, on account of the fact that he came down from the north from the mining towns before he'd started teachin' at the school--Niki wasn’t quite sure how he’d gotten in charge of everything, since kids didn’t often concern themselves with those sorts of details, and so all she knew is that he was rich, and he was scary, and Niki wanted him to hurt just as badly as she was hurtin’.</p><p>She thought of fire and burnin’ and the smolderin’, soot-covered remains of her old family home. She thought of fireflies, and wiped away her tears.</p><p>“I think,” Niki said, clambering to her feet, “I know what I’m gonna do.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>ty for reading! check out my content on tumblr, twitter, &amp; twitch @ cacowhistle!</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>tysm for reading! if you like my stuff and wanna support me elsewhere, follow me on tumblr, twitter, &amp; twitch @ cacowhistle!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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